Hi, You guys have great forum here and any help would be greatly appreciated. Iím a noobie to planted aquariums. I started my first low tech tank last weekend using sudeepmandal.com as a guide. I planted it with low light plants ( see list ) and dose it with 1/4 teaspoon seachem equilibrium, 1/8 teaspoon KNO3, 1/32 teaspoon KH2PO4. Everything looked great a few plants were stressed from the shipping but I started to see growth from the pygmy chain sword, hornwort, cabomba. The bacopa, rotala,cryptocoryne, are not doing well. It seems like they are melting. I made sure i did not planted them to deep. I am running my lights for 6 hours a day ( was thinking of increasing that to 7 hours to see if that would help). Do I need to cut all the melting plants back and do a 50-60 % water change? Or just let it continue. My water is starting to look junky with a lot of bubbles at the top. Will that start a algae bloom. I posted my spec. below and some pictures. The holes in the anubias i think is from some of the dry fertilizers getting on them when i dosed the tank with the filter on. I will try dosing with the filter off or pour it in a corner next time.

It looks like the light is not hitting the corners and some are bunched too tightly that it is blocking the light hence the melting issue with your stem plants.

Edit: You may be in the low light with that fixture to support some of those stem plants.

zoragen

01-25-2013 05:48 PM

I like your layout.

Crypts do melt and other plants can take a while to adjust. Remove any dead leaves (you don't want to leave decaying plant matter in the tank) and have patience.

Patience is the hardest part of planted tanks:icon_mrgr

I'm not sure why there are so many bubbles.

wkndracer

01-26-2013 01:01 AM

I would recommend adding ferts to a cup of tank water, mix, then the tank or as you said make sure circulation keeps if off the plants. (I solution dose for this reason actually)

Siphon off surface films.

(nice looking tank and welcome to the site)

Icemann

01-26-2013 02:00 AM

Thanks Guys,
for all the great advice. I'll remove all the decaying matter with a water change. And I'll try to have some patience.

m00se

01-26-2013 02:41 AM

Those holes and yellowing look to me like potassium deficiency. You might want to look for some dry ferts from one of the SnS guys or GLA etc. It's cheap and you can then adjust your dosing to whatever method you choose to follow, be it estimative index or PPPro. That scum is probably rotting bio. I wouldn't worry too much about it yet. You can add an air stone and churn the water with it for 30 minutes a day to break it up, and then when you do your water changes it will go with the waste water. That light you have is less than ideal from what I gather from others who have them. You might want to ramp up the photo period to say 9 or 10 hours a day.